


Ascension

by BlueColoredDreams



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Minor Violence, Speculative Piece, Spoilers to ep.63
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-26
Updated: 2017-05-26
Packaged: 2018-11-04 18:38:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10996662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueColoredDreams/pseuds/BlueColoredDreams
Summary: Taako abandons pragmatism. Merle forgets a plot device. The gods have their own plans.Someone loses everything they have.





	Ascension

**Author's Note:**

> I had to exorcise this idea from the universe. This whole thing was a dream of mine that was ridiculously realistic, where my brain set up everything, down to the last detail like how I was initially spoiled shit went down via tumblr while I was at work,  
> and like...  
> I had to exorcise it! It was haunting me, honestly.

The shock of it all immobilizes all of them; or at least, that’s what they tell themselves, later. It’s the truth they chose to take, so they could live with what happened.

And what happened was this:

Chaos. The doors are thrown open and there is a single moment of clarity. And then the armies start to stream in. There is yelling and fighting as they pour towards the center of the room.

“Bar the doors!”

A barrier, bright white and solid expanding outward, pushing away the onslaught.

It materialized behind her, and she saw it, black and inky and more humanoid than the rest save for the arm that swirls with black fire, and that fire coalesces into a hand of talon-like fingers that form a spike. She sees it, but there is no time to do more than react. No time to fight or flee or do anything more than what happens next.

She lifts the staff and brings it down flat on her knee the same time the black figure’s face screws up in anger and howls; there is a flash of light and an implosion of sound that pushes everyone backwards, and when it fades the figure’s arm is buried in her back, through to the other side, needlepoint fingers slick with blood and flesh, and just like the rest of the army, this manifestation of himself dissolves away.

“ _Pointless_.”

Lucretia folds over the hole in her gut.

She falls to her knees, then sways, and her body teeters, falls, and crumbles in a heap on the polished dais between the two pieces of her broken staff.

There is silence. And then:

Blood, bright crimson spreads over her robes, staining the sky blue fabric navy and a pure red, like the uniform she had forfeited years and years previously. It pools and spreads outwards. She does not stir.

It is quiet. There is a moment of absolute stillness, deafening after everything. Then, a soft series of metallic clinks, like a key in a lock, loud in the silence as it fills the room.

One by one, the bracers split and fall to the stone floor.

And the spell is broken.

“Merle, you’re a cleric! Do _something_!”

Killian, by the door. Magnus stands, agape, and then shakes his head. They’re all pulled towards the center, some of them clutching their loose bracers to their wrists. Some of them are ashen. One of the guards is crying silently.

They look down at the body.

“There... there’s nothing,” Merle says softly. “It’s too...”

There’s something missing from her, something vital.

In life, the Director had never seemed so small.

“Do you think,” Taako says suddenly. “We could pull that shit off again?”

Merle scratches his beard and nods. “Worth a shot. I might could summon just enough magic just to spite the bastard, but… I'd need some help. Barry?”

Barry is silent for a moment, face stricken as he looks down at Lucretia’s body. For all the spite and animosity between them all these years, he never…

“Uh, yeah, yeah, I think I could anchor,” he says slowly.  “It might not work, but if it does, she won’t be far. I can sense… there's something not right.”

“Don’t,” Magnus snaps. “We have to, we have to make sure everyone else is okay, we can’t waste time, we can’t bring people back--”

“You, shut up,” Taako says, pointing. “You don’t know what we do, which, Barold, see if you can fix that shit—and I’m doing this. Merle?”

“On three,” Merle agrees.

“Be careful,” Barry urges, setting a hand in Merle’s shoulder. He looks down at the body again, and swallows hard. “And quick. She... she only... she only bought us a reprieve. He’s going to— it’s gonna get worse.”

They count, and then they’re in the ethereal plane. Only, it’s _different_ , the spell has gone wrong and Merle is with Taako instead of anchoring him with Barry’s help and they are both _there_. It felt like something _pulled_ them there instead of them pushing.

It barely even looks like where they want to go.

It’s black and oily and threaded through with iridescent veins of blues and reds and greens. It’s seething and angry and ominous.

But they see her, near a slash of white light, and she stands in the center of a group of figures, something blinding in her hands.

Here, too, she is frighteningly small and diminished from who they knew as the Director. She is more like Lucretia, here, petite and once-more a woman in her early thirties, stripped from the ornate robes and silks and imposing oak staff and careful regality. She is clothed simply in a blouse and cloth pants with sensible boots, her hair braided back like she would often do it on the ship. Her jacket is tied around her waist, red as blood in the darkened plane.

She turns towards them and the figures around her stir and turn as well. At first, the fear is of the sentinels, soldiers of the Hunger to take her away and use her for their own purpose. To sound the alarm, to let it know they are here. But then, they resolve into achingly familiar sights.

First, a man. No, first he is a skeleton whose flesh fills out over the bones between breaths, face handsome and solemn. His mouth tightens.

Beside him is a elven woman, who winks and raises a finger to her lips.

And then, Istus, serene and knitting, hair billowing out in a non-existent wind. Part of her infinity scarf loops and twists around Lucretia’s ankles, but neither seem concerned. Beside Istus is an impossibly tall woman, skin almost black as the scene around them. Her skin shines as she moves, blue-black and green-black and gold. Her eyes have no whites, just a circle of incandescent blue-white like moonstone. On her hair is a circlet of tiny white finger bones.

“Oh, _boys_ ,” Lucretia sighs. She pauses, then tips her head. There is something not right about the movement, about her eyes. “No, that’s not quite right. I am no longer your employer. And you are no longer my crew mates, are you?”

She sighs again and the light between her hands pulses. Istus pulls a thread out from the darkness and knits it in, and it is just as bright as that pulse of light.

“We’re your friends, Lucretia,” Merle says. “We... we came to get you back.”

The tall woman laughs, and Kravitz gives the smallest shake of his head.

“Forget me,” Lucretia says bluntly. “Leave me here and go back. Go now. It’s not safe.”

“Okay, I hear you but why?” Taako says. “Come back and fight; the others, they deserve to know why, you recruited them and they should _know_!”

“There are rules, Taako. You know that,” Kravitz says gently.

“Yeah, that we’ve been busting left and right for the past one hundred and ten years,” Lup retorts. “He might as well ask why we’re not breaking them now.”

Kravitz looks skyward in utter exasperation.

 “Why?” Merle urges.

“Because I made a deal,” Lucretia says. “I was offered a deal that cost _everything_ , yet nothing at all. I took it.”

There is a beat of silence.

“Yeah, that explains a whole damn lot,” complains Taako.

“I said, back in Refuge, that you had been my agents for a long time,” Istus says.

“That boys, was your clue.”

Lucretia’s mouth moves, but it is not her voice. It is Istus, speaking through her. The light in her fingers begins to shift in hues, lighting her in blues and reds and greens. She is uncanny. She is something more, but is also something less.

“ _And what goes hand in hand with fate, boys_?” Istus, through Lucretia, asks.

A beat. A pause.

“Death,” says the Raven Queen.

“Wait. Wait. You took a deal knowing you were gonna, gonna _die_? What did they offer?” Merle asks, bewildered.

Lup shakes her head; Kravitz sighs softly, face sympathetic.

Lucretia shakes her head, face slack and serene.  She sighs once, and her voice is her own again, brow knitting in something akin to agony: “ _Oh_ , my friends, I was already dead.”

Her form flickers a bit, an outline of threads in the shape of a woman, and then she’s back, older and straight shouldered and regal, thin mouth pinched in a concentrated frown.

“Wonderland is, of course, a death trap,” the Director repeats.

“Oh _shit_ ,” Taako hisses.

Her expression changes to something a little less harsh, urgent and weary and pleading.

“I nearly died, taking the truth of this world and the light and the Hunger with me,” the Director says, voice grim and low and it is fresh, the loss is new and it hurts. She said that just minutes ago, her lungs filled with breath and her heart beating.

Her form flickers briefly to something broken and battered and bloody.

“Cam said you escaped,” Merle says roughly. “You _escaped_.”

“He also said I wouldn’t last ten minutes in the Wilds on my own,” the broken revenant says. “Both things can be true at the same time.”

And she is Lucretia again. She is young and whole again. And she is glowing, just faintly. The light in her hands is smaller now.

“I died,” she says slowly, like she’s savoring the words on her tongue. She's never said it before, never acknowledged it. “I was already wounded, and exhausted. I was without food or water, and I was attacked. I don’t remember what it was...”

“It was a gryphon,” Lup supplies.

“Yes. You’re right. It was a gryphon. I lost my footing and fell and it beset me. I died in the Felicity Wilds,” Lucretia says. “I died and I was... I was taken for judgment.”

Her voice is quiet, just as small and frail as her broken body had seemed. “Judgment, true judgement, where a soul is never given a chance in the astral sea, to move on, it’s rare and it is harsh and it is eternal. I was judged for what I had done; the deaths I had caused— the damage my actions would continue to cause. I was judged as seven people, because I was the only one who remembered. I begged for Death to judge me for you, so you would not suffer for what you could not remember. And Death accepted.”

“And you should have gone right to the Stockade, from what it sounds like, lady,” Kravitz sighs.

Lup scowls at him and Lucretia shrugs.

“Fortunately for me,” she continues. “Your mistress interceded.”

“She did indeed,” Kravitz murmurs, giving a reverent nod towards the Raven Queen.

“I helped a fair bit,” Istus says. She chuckles, and smoothes a fray in the scarf. “Well, more than a fair bit.”

Kravitz bows towards her. “Of course, ma’am.”

“That said, I’m surprised you didn’t use the gift I gave you, Merle,” Istus chides gently. “This here is not a particularly safe place for you to be. Mortals do not do well with the comings and goings of gods.”

“My what?” Merle asks. Taako groans a quiet _dammit_ , his palm flying to his forehead. “ _What_? What’d I forget?”

Lucretia frowns in confusion. The light in her palms flashes, and she gives a small noise of comprehension. “I think it was longer than nine seconds, my lady.”

Istus hums and nods, needles flashing in the pulsing light cradled between Lucretia’s palms. It grows fainter, but Lucretia herself grows brighter in its place. Her eyes are bright and swirling, like oil on water instead of the familiar, steady brown. Her arms begin to look like she has had her veins filled with liquid gold, like biotite brushed with gilding.

“But you—we haven’t been interacting with a ghost for two years, for fuck’s sake,” Taako says grumpily.

“No, I was quite alive until momentarily,” Lucretia acknowledges. “When our old… not-friend tried to wrest the Light from me.”

“We were not ignorant of the Hunger or its goals,” the Raven Queen supplies. “The happenings of the material planes echo in the Celestial planes, affect us and our purview. We knew, long before you had any inkling, of what the man who called himself John and his multitude hoped to achieve and what he and they have done. There are so many souls that have been kept from rest in his quest…”

“I’ve been re-stitching you seven so many times it’s a wonder you haven’t shrunk ten inches,” Istus sighs.

“Gods, it seems,” Lup says with a wry grin. “Don’t take too well to being threatened.”

“What an upstart,” Istus chimes in. “ _Ascendant_. Not a chance.”

“There is an order to things,” the Raven Queen says firmly. “The order keeps us alive, keeps us moving, it flows and feeds the universe and keeps the system in its orbit.”

“Rules,” Merle says softly, “Over everything, for everything. Even gods.”

“Even gods,” Lucretia agrees. “But this, the Light… well, it _is_ the rules. You know this.”

“We heard her plea,” the Raven Queen says, sweeping one hand towards Lucretia. “And, if she died, there would be no one left who was able to help _us_. There were the liches, the two that died first, yes. But no one who _knew_. She was the first.” 

“I’m sorry you have—that you had to do this, Lucretia. That it had to be you,” Lup says quietly.  Lucretia shakes her head. “If it was either of us… I couldn’t do a thing and Barry… I didn’t know what happened to Barry until you took me from that cave, Taako and I saw him for the first time. I didn’t know he— I, I was stuck for so long… And now, you, too…”

“We needed someone who _knew._ Really, it could have been any of you, really, but… Given what was done when you first arrived to this particular plane… well,” Istus says. “It’s easier to… repair a fray than to re-write everything. Lucretia's own machinations had thrown quite a wrench in ours. It worked out in the end. It always does.”

“We cut a deal,” Lucretia says. “My life, returned in service to Istus and the Raven Queen and all the other gods who wanted the best fate, the best future; returned to serve the plan they set into motion a century ago. It was not too large of a price,” she whispers. “I already was on the path they most desired despite the roadblocks we’d encountered, and my—my own mistakes. I had started the wheels, and there were things in motion that couldn’t be stopped… I would do what was necessary, and then I would die. It was not too much to ask.”

“Bullshit! That’s _everything_ , that was everything—”

“It _is_ everything,” Lucretia agrees. The Light in her hands is small, small enough to cup in one palm. “Which is why it was _fair_. Divine intervention does not come cheap, Merle, you know it first-hand, pardon the, ah, pun. But a life…”

“A life… can buy a lot of things. A better chance for victory, for instance.”

“Lucretia, _why_ ,” Merle asks quietly.

“Because you all had _lives_ ,” she says softly. “And I had nothing without you. When I died, I came to know two things.”

She pauses, then closes her eyes slowly.

“First,” she says, “I saw all of creation—not at once, not in some existentially shattering realization, no, but year by year, we saw all of creation, spread out. The rules, the cycles, the bonds, I saw them all, spread out before me like threads on a loom, and I _saw_. When I died, I _knew_. All the pieces and parts we’d failed to comprehend fell into place, and I understood and I knew. And what I knew was terrible, awful, all-consuming, and endless. We are not meant to see existence on that scale, not meant to see as much as we had because it’s just too _awful_. The awe and fear and size—it’s just _too_ much.”

“And I knew,” she continues, “I knew that I had to protect it because inside of forever, inside of all of creation, was the time I spent with you all, was the love and the time and the bonds, and even though it went bad, even though we went our separate ways, I had to protect it. We knew! We knew what he wanted, what the Hunger wanted most of all, and we fought our small, small battles. They might have been pointless in the scale of it all, they might have been our loss and our defeat and our sorrows, but…  In that endless cycle were those small battles, but the ripples they created… were a tide so large that it could wash the Hunger away.”

She looks at them then, her face washed with a feverish delight. “Your lives, your families, the people you loved and lost are _not_ small and worthless. They are threads in a pattern so large and so beautiful that to remove just one is _sacrilege_. And I knew, I knew these things, and so I did what I had to do. In a sense, Taako, the answer _was_ love all along. I had to take the deal to protect our pattern of love in the scheme of eternity.”

She pauses, and then shakes her head at her friend’s expressions of consternation.

“I tried, you know, to see if I could, if I could fight fate,” Lucretia says softly. “If there was any way I could still be a part of our little family, maybe not the same way as before, but… in the Bureau, maybe, with everyone… but… when you _are_ fate, you can’t fight it.”  

“Becoming,” the Raven Queen corrects.

“Was.”

“Am,” Istus agrees.

“Partly,” Lucretia amends. “Yes.”

“ _What the absolute goddamn fuck_!”

Taako strides forward and grabs Lucretia. Her skin is hot under her blouse like she's burning underneath her flesh. Grabbing her fills him with a bone-deep ache, a buzzing in his teeth, a duality in his vision.

“Let her go, Taako!” Lup gasps.

“Taako,” Kravitz warns, “Let her go— it'll kill you if you don't!”

“Then fucking explain! Listen, all of that back there, it's not nothing! You _had_ a family! Like I know, I know, okay usually I'm Mister Prag-fucking-matics and honestly I don't give a shit, but—you had _something_. Those people aren't throwing their lives on the line for shits and giggles, they care,  and they are genuinely upset back there! What about the _kid_ ,” he says, shaking Lucretia. “He said you gave him a _home_. And—that’s, whether you like it or not, whether _we_ like it or not, because trust me, I don’t like this! But that’s family, and family’s all you ever get! _Fuck_!”

His hands smoke where they hold her and she shakes her head. Some of the otherness ebbs away from her face, and she is Lucretia alone, the youngest of them all and weary and alone, alone, alone for all those years.

“I regret it, you know,” she whispers, tears streaming down her face, bright and pearlescent. Her tears hit the ground and around their feet, the oily black retreats, white threading through from the places the droplets hit.

“I had no idea of what I would be giving up, I didn’t think I would get any of you back, that the people I sought out would, would care for me, that I was _worth_ a family again, and—when, when I realized what I was going to lose—I fought! I did fight against it because _I don't want to leave all of you_ —”

“But it is her price,” the Rave Queen says flatly. “Even those who would make deals with me must pay. And she needed to pay— dearly, for what you did, what would _be_ done, for the ultimate result.”

“Fuck you.”

“ _Taako_!” Kravtiz hisses as Lup puts her fingers to her lips and whistles loudly.

Taako turns to them both, livid. “Did you—did you know about this?”

“No! Honestly, _no_ ,” Kravitz says, shaking his head and holding his hands out. “I was stranded, I was—I was marooned inside of the Stockade, and then I was summoned here by my mistress, she said one of her suppliants was coming and then, then Lady Istus and this—this miscreant lich—”

“Whaddup,” Lup says, jerking her chin up and winking.

“Why does she look like you, Taako, what _is going on_?” 

“Long story, but _you_!” He turns his glare towards Lup. “Long time no see and all, glad to see you, what's up, but how are _you_ involved in all of this?!”

Lup frowns for a moment as she thinks. “I… I… how… _am_ I involved?”

Her form blurs as she thinks, face melting into a skull grinning out from the cowl of a bright red robe. “How… am I even here? I shouldn't be—I’m still… I’m still inside…”

“Easy now,” Kravitz murmurs. He takes a cautious step away from Lup’s figure, her outline glowing and twitching in the gloom.

Skeletal fingers shake against orbital sockets. Energy crackles off her form as she shakes. She starts to break down, fray at the seams, voice growing ragged and hysterical.  “I’m inside—! It went wrong, wrong—so wrong—I’m— _Get me out_! I want out! It’s dark and I need out, _my_ _friends_ , Barry, _Barry_ — ** _Taako_**!”

Kravitz looks towards the Raven Queen for direction—the Raven Queen looks at Lucretia. “Control her,” she says flatly. “She’s your… problem.”

“Lup,” Lucretia says gently. Her face flickers with red light from her friend's decaying spell. “Lup, I brought you here. Not all of you, but most of you.”

“I’m still—”

“Yes, a great deal of you is still trapped,” Lucretia answers. “It will be over soon, Lup. I called you here.”

“It was dark and—I knew _some_ things, but… there, I felt… someone needed me,” she whispers. “Someone needed me to come and… come and… and…”

“That was me,” Lucretia soothes. “I called out for you.”

“It… felt familiar,” Lup says idly, slowly pulling herself back together. Her form solidifies, and slowly the skeleton bleeds into flesh, leaving Lup looking tired and baffled. “I… shouldn’t look this alive, I should just be bones and robes. I shouldn’t know some of the things I know, like—how do I know what killed you? Lucretia, what… what did you _do_?”

“That was me,” Lucretia repeats. “I bent the rules a little. When I called you, I told you what would help you feel at ease here, to keep you from falling apart. You shouldn’t think about it again.”

She turns her glassy, many-hued gaze back onto Taako. “Does that answer your question?”

“Yeah, no,” Taako answers. “Some of it, maybe? A little? But like… what is happening, _really_?”

“I thought it would be obvious,” Istus says airily.

“No, no it’s not,” Kravitz, Taako, Lup and Merle retort.

Istus shrugs and her needles flash in time with the pulse of the ball of light in Lucretia’s hands. Taako grips her shoulders tighter as she bows her head over it.

Taako’s bones ache and his hands can no longer feel Lucretia beneath them. He hears her, though she doesn’t speak, he hears her over and over in time with the click of Istus’ needles, with the shine of the light, with the throbbing white light spreading beneath her fingers.

_I don’t want to leave—_  
_I want to be with you all, I want you to want me to be with you—_  
_Want—_

He steps back slowly, hands sliding off of her shoulders. The need of it echoes in his mind, in his chest, in his mouth—she wants so much, she needed them so much, needed them to be with her, to notice her and acknowledge her. It’s so familiar and so striking that he almost feels the need to kneel, to stay here in this place between the planes forever, to listen forever.

Istus’ needles click. Lucretia’s voice echoes in his ears, an ebb and flow of noise that crescendos with each contact of the needles.

He’s heard this before, each time they picked up one of their relics, each time they saved the Light, he’s heard it ever since he spent the time he fashioned the fake Light, a disappointing reproduction of something that was so radiantly desired that people would _die_ for it. He heard it in Refuge, from the mouth of a little girl who offered him and the others a whole new world, then left them to watch their mistakes burn through an entire town.

Did the Light always speak in Lucretia’s quiet, even voice? Or was it Lucretia, who sounded like the Light?

He’d never listened before.

He looks, then, really looks. He steps back again. Merle grabs his elbow and holds him in place.

“You see,” Istus says, “My little yarn ball here has caused quite some problems just rolling about freely in the cosmos. It just wants. And wants. And wants. It needs people, needs their curiosity and attention. Nothing wrong with that, but… It can’t protect itself from the things that want _it_ , too. It calls them, begs them, and… they're not all good folks. And so, how does one go about protecting something like that? We’ve been seeking an answer, a solution, to that problem for a long time.”

The Raven Queen gives a quiet laugh. “What if, for instance, that Light was to be bound to a consciousness, someone who would use it to sustain bonds, to keep them safe and cherish them…? If the Light was bound to an existence that was bonded to existence itself, to the people within that existence, to people who would stop at nothing, absolutely nothing, to make sure it was kept far, far away from this usurper? Given form and thought and will, so it could flee without relying on others, so it could walk among them and grant its knowledge? Bind it to the planes so it couldn't be used to tear those same bonds away? Well… I’m sure you’re beginning to comprehend.”

“You _used_ her,” Merle says. “You used her as a means to—to what end?”

“The gods are only alive because the material planes exist,” Kravitz says quietly. “They’re bonded to us mortal creatures. Without us, they… they die.”

“Oh no,” the Raven Queen corrects. “It’s worse than that. Because there are multiple planes, the bonds in the other planes create an echo that continues their existence, yet they are aware there is a plane where they simply… aren’t.”

“ _Were_ multiple planes,” Lucretia says dreamily.

“Will be.”

“Might one day be,” the Raven Queen says; “If this is successful. But, yes, there _were_ multiple planes. Now there are not. Pan has already… _faded_ , due to lack of bonds.”

“ _Oops_.”

“Yes. Well. No matter,” the Raven Queen replies. She waves a hand towards Lucretia. “There’s enough hope that the bonds will reform in their own time, and he’ll be removed from the non-existence certain people have placed him in.”

“You’re only protecting yourselves!” Lup says angrily, energy and magic boiling off of her in waves. Her teeth shine through her lips as she snarls. “You don’t care what we went through! You don’t care that we suffered, that we died—! So many people died, so many people had to suffer for this!”

“But, don’t you see? It would protect us all,” Lucretia says. “Even more than before, even more than I had dreamed, you could have a _chance_. We could honestly, truly, and thoroughly have a chance! And I, I will not allow him and them to use the Light—use _me_ —anymore!”

With her declaration, the small disk of light pulses once more, and disappears. Lucretia’s body grows bright and dissolves into silver threads. The loop of Istus’ scarf rises into the air, unraveling and twisting within the gaps in the silver threads that outline where Lucretia’s body was once.

And slowly, she reforms. She is more like the Director like this, older, thinner, eyes sharp and her face lined. There’s still something of the thirty-year-old Lucretia in her too, in the bright shine of her eyes and the curve of her cautious mouth. Her hair, once white-blonde, shines silver and her silhouette glows just faintly, the air shimmering as she moves, a trailing afterimage of light. Behind her, it almost looks like thousands upon thousands upon thousands of gossamer-thin strands trail from her shoulders like a train, spreading out and out and out so far that they simply disappear.

“Go,” she says. “Go now.”

“Lucretia,” Merle says. “What are we supposed to _do_? How do we explain this? This… whatever this is? They don't even know the Light exists, some of them.”

She tips her head to the side again, like she’s listening to someone whisper in her ear. “You can tell them that it was too late to save me,” she says. “And that is the truth. A gentle one, perhaps, but still true.”

She levels her gaze at him, lips pursed in thought. She reaches out, her hands outstretched and open.  

“Or you can tell them the harshest truth of all,” she says softly. “Of our journey and of our struggles and of my plans and deceptions and the way I loved them. Tell them that I am _not_ gone. I will be among them, as I always have always sought them out: the innovators and the creative and those that daydream of things higher than themselves. The ones that want to preserve and save and guide. The ones that change their fates, the ones who echo in all of eternity. I am forever bound to you, and to those in the Bureau, and I will keep those bonds safe, no matter what. I am with them as I have been, their director.”

She grins, her teeth flashing white in the darkness as it roils violently, slowly swirling patterns beginning to spin and heave rapidly. Threads of green and red and blue spin around her from the darkness, bleaching silver white as they come into contact with the train of light behind her.

“It’s time for you to leave.”  

She gestures to Kravitz and Lup. “I summoned them, for you, to help and—and maybe give you some comfort and safety. Take them with you; fate will guide you back with them.”

Istus waves behind her; “You like my sick knitting skills? New god! _Bam_!”

The Raven Queen sighs.

Lup still shimmers with radiant anger, eyes filled with tears as she looks at Lucretia and what she’s become. “I’m never going to die, just so I _never_ have to see your smug face ever again,” she spits at the Raven Queen. “Never.”

“You? Who doomed so many because you refused to destroy what would power your enemy? How many deaths have you been complicit in, lich? How many people did your little gauntlet destroy?” the Raven Queen laughs.

“You know what, Taako’s right: _Fuck you_ ,” Lup hisses.

The Raven Queen seems unruffled as she waves a dismissive hand. “We shall see, lich. Use your anger, use this connection. See where it takes you, in the end. I doubt it’s anywhere meaningful.”

“Quite far, actually,” Lucretia and Istus say in unison. The Raven Queen simply inclines her head and gestures for Lucretia to continue. 

“And now, for—not for the last, but certainly the most important time—I will direct you. There is a part of me, still, in each Relic,” Lucretia, the new Light of Creation, says. “Now that you have all come into the memories of their making, and I am whole, you can use them freely—what resides within them now was freely given, not taken. Do not worry. Now, go. Fight and win and let your pattern continue, forevermore.”

She is quiet for a long time. She raises her hands, bright white fire burning at her fingertips. “Win. Do it for me, please,” she whispers.

And she flicks her wrists, and they are gone from the plane.

 

 

Lucretia lingers, just for a second afterwards. Then, she feels the pull. She feels it on her fingers and against her skin, and she wants, wants, wants. And it is a familiar want, an age-old desire.

 _Notice me_ , all of her whispers, _need me, speak to me, ask for me, laugh with me, need me_.

“Go,” Istus says. And she must obey, for she is just the whims of fate, the Light that guides and directs people forwards on their paths and breathes their creations into their skin. She is the tool of the universe, the recorder of knowledge and bonds and light.

She is enough of herself that she ignores the biggest tug against her, the insistent black void that radiates raw desire for her abilities, the malleable kernel inside of the universe that holds every rule and every bond. Instead, she steps through the planes, dodging sentinels and armies, flitting past the echoes of every plane sucked into that insistent maw of desire. Some, she trails a finger against, bleaching out the darkness—a mongoose she recognizes, a woman with a staff of rebar, an old teacher—she can’t help but reach out to them, the echoes of an old life.

She steps, finally, into her home.

She sees two things, two possibilities—one grows fainter by the second as the scene plays on. She ignores it, because it is something she doesn’t want. No one here wants it.

She watches, gives that shining thread a gentle tug. Watches as a blue cloak is laid over her old self, watches the wet faces and tight jaws. Watches the man in red leap to his feet and shout, nearly tripping over himself to reach the figure stumbling out of and over the outstretched ribs of an umbrella. Watches as her friends steel themselves.

She feels their pull on her, the bonds that make up this singular, last universe tight and heavy and thick. She walks among the webs of fate, bright hand on her family’s shoulders. They need her, despite not knowing it’s her they call out for.

She leans and whispers an idea to Carey, who’s been wondering how to protect them all. She plants the strategy brewing in Magnus’ mind. She gives the words of calm and peace to Merle. To Barry and Lup she gives the idea of time, tugging and stretching the threads around them to give Lup a bit more to hold onto. She suggests, slyly, to Taako an idea of how to use a spell a bit differently than intended. She gives peace and courage and makeshift weapons to her bureau members, her friends and colleagues and family.

She kneels, finally, by the small boy on the dais who holds her hand. His mind is racing, bits and bobs and oh, the light off of him is wonderful to see. She puts her hands on Angus’ shoulders and presses her forehead to his and gives him all he wants. Pieces, parts, ideas and ingenuity, her last gift for him. She lingers with him as long as she can, pouring into him as much as he wants, because he wants knowledge more than anything, and she treasures that more than ever. She gives him fragments of truth and a shard of light to put into his heart, so that he will always be the bright boy she was first so puzzled by.

Finally the tugging on her is so overwhelming that she can no longer stay still, the need and want of everyone in this place so delightful that she darts from person to person, giving them all the knowledge that is open to her.

The fate of the future shines bright—all she has to do is direct them towards it, her family, her price.


End file.
